If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.

I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.

Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were volcanoes.

In every operation there is an above the line and a below the line. Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you do the job.

All power corrupts but some must govern.

Why did I desert Labour? Total bloody disillusionment. The party was a corpse. It had no ideology, it became detached, old, spineless and needed to go.

I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.